The Inner Peace Process – Acceptance

Choosing Acceptance for your own Peace of Mind

There are three steps that are critical to achieving our own peace of mind. I call them the Inner Peace Process.

• Acceptance – of what is in our life and how things are

• Surrender – to the flow rather than fight it

• Let Go – of what is no longer serving you

According to Marianne Williamson, surrender means to let go of your attachment to results or the outcome you want. That means having acceptance of what is and that you have no control over a situation.

I will cover these 3 steps in a blog trilogy over the next 3 weeks. Today we start with Acceptance.

Acceptance means to stop denying the reality of the situation we are in or what is happening around us or even who we are. It’s about accepting that what is just is whether we like it or not.  It is the first step towards being able to change things or what we have in our life that we do not like as we cannot change anything we deny exists.

Once we accept that what is is, then we stop fighting against it and can find peace around it.

It is important to accept people, as well as situations, for who they are … just like we want them to accept us for who we are. We need to feel this acceptance for ourselves first because we can’t expect other people to accept us if we don’t accept ourselves. Once we have done that, we can love our self and, consequently, it will be easier to feel that same acceptance and empathy for others.

So the first step in acceptance is to accept yourself and that you are who you are. You may not always be perfect –and in fact no one is perfect – and you may want to change some behaviors. That is all okay. We all need to accept the fact that we are where we are and who we are and that is exactly how it is meant to be.

I have a mantra that really helps me when I am feeling frustrated. “I am exactly where I need to be right now and whatever is meant to be, will be. It will all be okay because I am supported by the Universe.” This is quite a spiritual concept and requires us to trust in the Universe, Source, God or whatever you want to call it. That doesn’t mean I don’t do anything at all. I still take action to be the best I can be and do what I need to do to achieve my goals … but I choose not to worry about what is not the way I want it. It will all be okay once I surrender and accept what is and focus on how I want my life to be and what I can do to create that without being too attached to a particular outcome.

Choosing acceptance and having an accepting attitude will help us accept others and enable engaging relationships as people will not feel they are being judged and therefore be in defensive mode. It is the ‘A’ of The BALLS Communication Strategies in my book to help you build healthy relationships.

So we need to accept what is happening so we can make decisions in our life that make the best of what we have. Accepting what life offers us is, at the very least, an opportunity to learn and grow and to choose not be bitter and play victim.

Next week I will talk about Surrender, which is very closely related to acceptance and a necessary step to letting go so we can feel peace and happiness.